CPU Temperature Under Load

GPU Core Clock Rate

GPU Effective Memory Clock Rate

GPU Temperature While Idle

GPU Temperature Under Load

Description

The last 5 years I've been "gaming" on an old laptop I bought in high school. i5 2410m and an Nvidia GT 520m. It's sucked to say the least.

Build a few friends PC's, always had some financial setback before I could do mine.

But I've finally completed this beauty, and, went way overkill doing it.

Most purchases on Black Friday or during that week/weekend.

So, it wasn't all completed at once, I didn't get the GPU until the 30th of December, ran the iGPU for a couple weeks, which still ran better than the dedicated Nvidia chip in the laptop.

Dates on the pictures are wrong, build date was the 20th.

Overclocked CPU to 4.5 GHz @ 1.33v, probably could do more, but I'm happy with it right now

The GPU Ran out of the box stock at 2025 MHz. After tweaking in, dialed in a stable +135 MHz overclock for the core and +500 MHz on the memory for around 2152 MHz core and 11 GHz effective memory clock. Never above 50c. It's a beast of a card.

Anyway, a breakdown of my part choices follows. Thanks for reading!

i7 6700k: This was supposed to be an i5, but then Micro Center decided to have a sale. Worth the hour drive there.

Kraken X62: Oh man, NZXT did a great thing, refreshing their whole lineup right before this build. Was going to get the X61, then this beauty showed up. And man, is it worth the extra money for the looks.

Asus Z170 Pro Gaming/Aura: This was, interesting, and went through a lot of revisions. My plan was always a black/white color scheme so I could match RGB lighting to it no matter what. I actually thought this motherboard had on board RGB headers so I could plug strips into it, but I found out it didn't right before purchase. Still went with it though, a bit of extra lighting, and $30 off with the processor at Micro Center.

16 GB Ripjaws V DDR4-3200 CL16: Not specifically the ram I wanted, but still really great. I wanted the CL14 variant of this speed, but after determining it really won't make that much a difference, I went with this.

850 Evo 1TB: Fast, reliable, awesome Black Friday price from Newegg, and tons of space for all the games.

WD Black 2 TB HDD: Mass storage, 5 year warranty. What more could I want?

EVGA GTX 1080 FTW Hybrid: Another choice that I initially was not planning. This was supposed to be the 1070 version. But the day I was going to buy it I got a rebate from EVGA for the PSU and it was on sale too. And I figured at this point I already had gone bigger than I planned, might as well go all out.

NZXT S340 Elite: DAT GLASS. Seriously. It's so pretty. Was announced right before I started buying parts, and got one on Amazon luckily as they seemed to be sold out everywhere at the time.

EVGA 750 P2 PSU: This was supposed to be a G2, but I figured, eh, might as well step it up. 10 year warranty FTW.

EK Vardar fans: After watching/reading reviews of people with the 1080 hybrid, determined I wanted to actually control my GPU radiator fan, and got one for it. Got a 140mm for the top fan to run as intake as well so it could run slower and quieter. EK shipping fees suck though.

Fan filer: Cause no dust = happy PC.

Tax and shipping added in to show true final cost.

Part Reviews

CPU

CPU Cooler

It's so pretty! Worth the extra money just for the looks. Keeps the CPU most of the time no higher than 50c, in benchmarks I've seen it up to 60c. CAM software for controlling it can be a bit buggy at times however.

Edit 05/07:
After more than a year of owning it, it's still does great cooling, however there are massive problems with it that you should know.

The pump died within a year of ownership, and NZXT support is horrid,. Took more than a month to get a replacement.

Cam is trash. It's terrible and it's the sole reason I will not build with or buy NZXT parts anymore. From crashing to not starting to shady analytics and tracking built into it. It's absolutely horrible in every way.

Cooling performance is still excellent, and it looks good, but that's where it ends.

Storage

Video Card

SO GOOD. I mean it. So so good. Overclocked to 2139 MHz, Memory up to 11Ghz. Came out of the box boosting to 2025 MHz. Haven't seen temps over 50c with it. Do yourself a favor though and use a motherboard controlled fan for the radiator or you won't get as good of cooling as you will have no control of the fan.

Case

DAT GLASS. It's an absolutely beautiful case. You'll love it for sure. It's not hard to build in, easy to make your build clean with cable clamps and the cable management bar to the right of the motherboard. Lots of SSD trays, and good cooling options. Did I mention DAT GLASS? Cause it's beautiful.

4 stars for 1 reason. The HDD holder is trash. No padding, no tray, you screw the HDD directly onto the metal holder. It transfers every vibration, click, and noise from it to the case, and it's LOUD. Get some foam pads, rubber washers, something to put between it and the cage and it'll help. But I'd say this is it's only fault.

OMG YOU HAVE THE SAME STORY AS ME always building friends computers then making one for self without even seeing this i made myself a list that will include the new Vega 10, ryzen, and new ROG Noctis but otherwise identical to this! GJ mate

Looks pretty good! Z270 motherboard is also an option if you want some of the few extra features of it, but it doesn't make much difference otherwise. If you'd want to save some money, get the 850 EVO, pretty much the same speeds for a bit cheaper.

Looks really nice, found this board from Gigabyte that has RGB lighting so you can make all the lights on it whatever color you want and it has white accents on it.
The ASUS board you have though has RGB lighting, and it will sync with the lighting on the GPU you selected, so it really depends if you want that or the white accents on the board I linked.

It's doing great! never gets above 60-65c while the CPU is overclocked, and honestly usually in games holds in the 40s. Plus it looks good doing it.
I have the 280mm version, they make a 240 like the H100i v2, and both of them are based on the same pump design so regardless what you pick they should preform pretty closely.

It's been fantastic. I have the radiator at the back as the single exhaust, but it's perfectly fine. It was recommended to me to use a separate fan plugged into the motherboard instead of the one that came with it since you get no control over it if you use the stock one, not too hard, but you're stuck with a loose fan connector you need to tie up coming out of the card. But overall it fits really well and I've had no problems.